I sowed the cotton, hoed the cotton, and picked the cotton. The whole country bleeds and is in mourning. #ResearchRoadTrip pic.twitter.com/7lk820jLbt. Gerard Brandon, one of the largest slaveholders in the South, bought Wood and took her to his house, Brandon Hall, on the Natchez Trace. He came 407 miles.. The freedom suit had prevented Ward from selling Wood for nearly two years, but in 1855, he took her to a Kentucky slave-trading firm that did business in Natchez, Mississippi. A Brief History of the Salem Witch Trials. Enough to make a man gloomy. Reads Ellas letter. They led me to archives in nine states in search of her story, which I tell in full for the first time in my new book, Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America. You can explore lives and stories of these slaves at the 9 slave cabins in the plantation where the Black History in America Exhibit is displayed. is brandon hall plantation haunted? Harriss said many architectural features were kept true to the original design when the house was renovated in the mid-1980s, apart from closets, bathrooms, and the closed in porch. Sanford Poole & Sandy had gone to kill a deer. Middleton arrives, and he gets a package from home. The mill is out of fix, & too bad to get up a beef and all hands are on short rations. Thoughts of home. Danish West Indies, Denmark, Records of Enslaved People, 1672-1917 Brandon owning 287 horses, cattle, sheep & miscellaneous property, valued at $2120, and no real estate. You have to read between the lines: Oh, they mention Amy in a letter, and then you have to read another letter in the collection to realize that Amy is a slave and not a family member, Levengood said. The society Saturday held the first of four community workshops on how to use the online database at the organizations headquarters in Richmond, Virginia. An R. A. Morgan is also listed on the immediately preceding line, with seven slaves valued at $5600. Ward planned to make Wood the latest victim of this trade, but she resolved to fight. Her official freedom papers, at a courthouse in Cincinnati, had been destroyed in an 1849 fire, and her kidnappers had confiscated her personal copy. She was suing him for $20,000 in reparations. I suffer much mentally.. The Week is part of Future plc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. Conversation with Dr.Killibrou (?) She was later removed from the cotton fields and put to work in Brandons house. Before the Civil War, large Southern rice and cotton plantations depended on enslaved African Americans to operate successfully. If you know of any others send the information to me. Reprinted with permission from Smithsonian Enterprises. Vital statistics in the below list draw on the Brandon Children website and a public family tree on Ancestry. After 1815, as white settlers rushed into the lower Mississippi River Valley, many looked to purchase slaves to cultivate the regions most profitable crop. Begins December 24 entry. Brandon Hall Briars Plantation: Senderson Brighton Plantation :Mosby Brighton Woods Browmers Prissint: Adams Buckhunt Plantation: Mercer Canowa Plantation (on the Mississippi River): McAlroy, Metcalf Canowa Plantation (at Gaillards Lake): Ligon Carthage Plantation: Minor Cherry Grove Clermont Plantation: Nevitt Clifford Plantation Cliffs Plantation Brooding about home. The Whites lived in Covington, too, and in the spring of 1853 they convinced Ward to pay them $300 for the right to sell Wood and pocket the proceeds himselfprovided he could get her. These 81 years extended from Mississippi's frontier days during the period of grace and plenty before the Civil War, and through the South's darkest hours after the war. 1856 Brandon Hall In Natchez Mississippi $3,850,000 SOLD 73 Natchez Trace Pkwy, Natchez, Mississippi, 39120 7 beds 8 baths 10,768 sqft 45 acres Plantation Property Website Realtor Information: Jackie Smith PAUL GREEN REALTORS 601-442-2768 About This 1856 Brandon Hall In Natchez Mississippi Brandon Hall C1856. See scarborough2003, p.338, which discusses the Unionism of many Natchez elite but singles out the Conners, Quitmans, and Brandons as patriotic Confederates: At least eight near relatives of Natchez aristocrat Gerard Brandon, the son of former governor Gerard C. Brandon, served in the military. Buttermilk at Robertsons. Varina Banks Howell, dau of William & Margaret Howell, married Jefferson Davis on Feb 26, 1845 in the parlor of The Briars. One half illegible. Saving Slave Houses Project Preservationist Jobie Hill gave a tour of the Brandon Plantation in southern Virginia and talked about her Saving Slave Houses project and read more Report. A copy was made, 6 October 1804. Brandon Hall is a beautifully restored plantation home that dates back to 1856. The Robertson County Tax Rolls for 1866 show him with 25 horses and no real estate. In 1807, at the death of Benjamin Harrison III (1743-1807), his will divided the . 5-11: a debit and credit ledger for the trip; debits begin on 5 (numbered by Brandon as 7) and then are carried over on 8 through 11, with a final total (summed by me from Brandons subtotals) of $19,145.60 in expenses by February 2; credits begin page 6 (numbered by Brandon as 8) and then continue on 13 to 14, where a final total made by Brandon on February 2 shows $10,168.25 in credits, Begin August 1863 entry. 2. Even the judge who presided over Woods case, Phillip Swing, viewed it narrowly. This inventory lists the names, ages and capabilities of Arnold's newly . Wood was an early contributor to a long tradition of formerly enslaved people and their descendants demanding redress. The $2,500 verdict, the largest ever of its kind, offers evidence of the generational impact such awards can have. Got me excited. Reflects on James in the field. I whippped him a little. Anthony has the money. A Warner Bros. Brandon Plantation, one of the nation's oldest working farms along the James River in Prince George County, was sold to a family in Florida for $17.8 million. Cookie Settings, Illustration by Cliff Alejandro; Source material: W. Caleb McDaniel; NYPL (3), Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine now for just $12, Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America, Dried Lake Reveals New Statue on Easter Island. Brandon was also required to pay his wife $127,436 with legal interest and costs of suit. As one put it, Woods award was not a liberal equivalent for the loss of liberty she had suffered, but it would be applicable to a great many cases yet untried.. Note: Unless otherwise noted, page numbers below refer to my numbering of the photocopy pages of the full Brandon diary I acquired at HNF, not to Brandons numbering or to the Helen Rayne transcription. Smithsonian magazine participates in affiliate link advertising programs. Wipple preach. He was sent a bottle of wine, jelly cake, & pies. Read more Suggest edits to improve what we show. By suing Ward for the wages she had lost while owned by Brandon, her lawyers made clear that a verdict for Wood was an acknowledgment of the evils of slavery itself. They note that disenfranchisement and segregation only worsened the racial wealth gap, which was established under slavery and remains today. did desi arnaz jr have a stroke; moose tracks vs cow tracks ice cream Report of a Mrs. Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, a New Orleans native who has devoted much of her life to the study of slavery, spent 15 years in the courthouses of Louisiana, as well as in archives in Spain, France and. I worked under the meanest overseers, and got flogged and flogged, until I thought I should die.". A record now at the National Archives in Chicago confirms that he did, in 1879. Finally, they announced a verdict that few expected: "We, the Jury in the above entitled cause, do find for the plaintiff and assess her damages in the premises at Two thousand five hundred dollars.". "Brandon was a very rich man," Wood later said. Absence of farm animals on the list indicates strongly oriented cotton plantation. Gerard Brandon (1818-1874) was the Mississippi planter who purchased Henrietta Wood and then took her to Robertson County, Texas, during the Civil War. Thats when you have to be creative.. Yet Wood v. Ward did not set a sweeping legal precedent. about opposition to refugees, particularly if they had much property, and the slogan rich mans war & the poor mans fight. Another refugee who had fenced up a spring. She has learned to weave and is well satisfied your brother[-in-law] says. See Gerard B. Rickey and Alan C. Rayne, ed., I Will Write if I Have to Use a Stick: Letters from HomeCornelia Jane Shields Letters to her Children, 1864-1865 (University Park, Tex. At San Agustine by 11th. She was later removed from the cotton fields and put to work in Brandon's house. See, Trinity River (specific place illegible, but may be Madisonville) (possibly by July 22, when he paid $28 for a ferry, according to page 5 of the journal), qq Transcribe relevant portions of Texas diary, qq Go through probate records on Ancestry. Headed back to TX today using same route Brandon took with slaves, including Wood, in 1863. Documents citing slaves go back to the 1690s: Thats when slavery starts to grow fast in Virginia and other English colonies, Levengood said. Begins December 26 entry, very rainy. For them, the money Henrietta Wood demanded for her enslavement made a long-lasting difference. Lee Hall Plantation: Richard Decatur Lee : 371159N 763432W : 72001510 : Lexington Plantation: George Mason V : 383838N 771156W . The freedom suit had prevented Ward from selling Wood for nearly two years, but in 1855, he took her to a Kentucky slave-trading firm that did business in Natchez, Mississippi. [1] [2] [3] Begins October 3 entry. p.3: Deaths on Trip to Texas, continued onto 4. Nonetheless, I have always been conflicted about plantation-style homes. Brandon kept her enslaved on a cotton plantation until well after the war. One is hiring negroes to go 300 miles west for the government. Brandon sends 40. He then traveled on to Texas via these stops, according to a list on an unnumbered page of his journal: If he followed marked roads out of Alexandria to the Sabine River, then he would have gone through Natchitoches, but that road would have taken him to Milam, Texas, not Sabinetown. Begins October 21, the most melancholly day I have had in Texas. James (Jim) leaves for home & from thence to the army., Begins October 25 entry. Brandon Hall C1856. "I can't quite tell my age," Wood recalled in a newspaper interview in 1876, but she knew she was born enslaved to the Tousey family between 1818 and 1820. Fortunately for this country the institution of slavery has passed away, he had instructed the jurors, and we should not bring our particular ideas of the legality or morality of an institution of that character into Court or the jury-box. He had cautioned the jurors against an excessive award, claimingfalselythat many former slaveholders already regretted slavery. Mentions great opposition to new comers particularly with large numbers of negroes, adds that Deming had incured the displeasure of the people around him by furnishing supplies to a Mississippian. Returns to find Dud, jack S, Mose, Diceys & Lucys babys quite sick, Difficulty of keeping enslaved people well because they will eat imprudently & in evry way keep themselves sick. In 1834, the teenager was bought by a merchant in Louisville and taken from her family. Drayton Hall's African American history interpretation began with Richmond Bowens, who was descended from enslaved African Americans at Drayton Hall. II, p. 817, which claimed that at the beginning of the Civil War, Brandon owned a million dollars worth of slaves. Copyright 2023, The defendant was Zebulon Ward, a white man who had enslaved Wood 25 years before. Sanderson hung back in Natchez. All rights reserved. He helped Wood file a lawsuit in Cincinnati against Ward, now a wealthy man living in Lexington. When she died in 1912, her suit was already forgotten by all except her son. Two days earlier, the jury had watched as Wood took the stand; her son, Arthur, who lived in Chicago, was in the courtroom. Planned to make Wood the latest victim of this trade, but she resolved to fight worsened the wealth... I thought I should die. `` Suggest edits to improve what show., '' Wood later said in Lexington of its kind, offers of! 127,436 with legal interest and costs of suit about plantation-style homes former slaveholders already regretted slavery and public. 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